Sunday, January 16, 2011

Step Up or Mission?

It was the year 2007 (I think...) when I first plunged into Ministry to Muslims outreach.
I gained a family who had a passion to see Muslims come to Jesus for salvation. We learned about Islam & the culture. I even took a beginners Arabic class learning the alphabet (man was that difficult!).

We would go to mosques & wait for people to come out & start talking to them. During Islamic holidays we handed out greeting cards that celebrated the faith of our exemplary man of faith, Abraham, and the greeting goes on to explain the parallel between Abraham giving up his son & Allah giving up his son for our sins. We also passed out DVDs of the life of Jesus & a DVD with 3 short- amazing- films that are documentaries of Jesus appearing to Muslims in dreams! You can watch the movies yourself for free here:

It was w/ this group that I had my first Arabic food experience and made Arabic friends.

I took a trip to Dearborn, Michigan one June with this ministry to the largest Arabic Festival of the year. I've also sat in a mosque for a tour with a friend.

After I was unable to be involved in the ministry for scheduling reasons, I started getting requests from Arabic churches to lead worship for a few Sunday morning services as well as led worship for the annual prayer for the Middle East.

I always wondered why they wanted me to lead worship- I don't speak Arabic, and although I DO have Arabic somewhere in my history, I'm obviously more Latina.

I love Arabic food. One reason why I love it so much, aside from the yumminess, was bc when I would go into those
Restaurants, I would walk into their world. Their TVs played Arab music videos, families would gather, men would smoke sheesha together... And every time I went to an Arabic restaurant, it caused me to pray for the people & their salvation. It was a reminder to me to not forget to pray for them.

So a few years later... I end up living in the Middle East. How the HECK did that
happen??? I mean, I know it was cuz my bf went out there first and referred me as a prospective employee, but out of all places in the world.... Why am I here???

And now here I am 5 months later with my job coming to an end February 12 and a new company that offered me a job but says that position isn't guaranteed (and I still haven't heard from them about my status), I feel like I wasn't able to reach out to any Muslim. I feel like there's more to be done and I'm not ready to leave Kuwait, among obvious reasons.

But given my dabbles in Arab culture that I've had... As silly as this question sounds... Was I being prepared to come to Kuwait? Or is this another rung on a ladder to something else? I've learned so much and one thing I HAVE been able to
Do, is pray. Pray specifically, pray fervently, pray for the needs I've seen, pray for the persecuted, pray for the human trafficked, pray for those in bondage to drugs, and write a blog. My blog gets read by people all over the world. I'm glad I get to share not only my experiences, but my faith with those readers.

p.s. Does anyone know the significance of the picture of the map on this post? does 10/40 sound familiar?